Clings of metal, pots and kettles.

Trumpets of laughter, drumming of tables,
planting of cables.

Sounds of games, clashing of swords, narrator's voice saying "game on!"

Quiet dim lights. Sounds in sound played in rooms, as people bring dishes out at noon.

Walls of cold separated speakers, waves of warmth shook the walls.
Crying in Midnight's, cats at 3, pens clicking at half past two.

Computers locked open.
Music of this neighborhood rang in my ears, as I stand by the door, paper wrapped in hand. Looking to the lights of another home...

There's a hidden sweetness in the stomach's
emptiness.
We are lutes. No more, no less.

If the soundbox is stuffed full, there is no room
for music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean with
fasting,

Every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the
steps before you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier—write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal
statue sits where your spirit should.

When you fast, good habits gather like friends who
wish to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring.
Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power.

But even if you have, if you've lost all will and
control,

They come back when you fast,
Like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants
flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see, when you fast, this table spread with
other food,
better than the broth of cabbages.

  ~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Love someone who you cannot even
look in the eye:
it's not the demons in their self
but the way they make your heart
skip two beats instead of one
and maybe the realization that
they need not more than one look to know
you have already decorated a heart shaped room
in your ribs for them to find their home.

That's all they'll need to know
how once they let you in
you'll overstay
and lose your mind every time
their footsteps echo in the silent soundbox
of your conscious.

We don't talk of storms when they aren't already there;
if they can't fix you up,
they'll teach you how to ache instead,
and perhaps I'll learn to forget how to
give myself away in my smiles
and scribbles.

and scribbles.

I'm losing my ability to speak
soon, no one will be able to understand me
i'll be speaking gibberish
using slang that no one can place
reinventing english
until language is my own

I use the same words
but they never have the same meaning
I speak in circles until my head buzzes
and my mouth is too tired to move

I am a mute
and a soundbox
an animal -- only one of my kind
unable to communicate
with a single living soul

the turn of the rail
round the land.
the curve of the
soundbox against
the hand.
the engine rumbles
somewhere, undefined,
as love disappears
tonight.
the wall lines the sea
in holland.  The velvet
folds close the stage
at the opera.
Tile on the roof
silently shedding
the rain as love
disappeared today.
Relentlessly cold is
the hearthstone.
The march of the
nightshift to
the factory
from home.
Barge tied to barge
sounding the horn,
a freight of black
coal, buries the heart
as love disappears tonight.
Dark are the waters
plied by the fishing
boats and trawlers.
The paths are
map-less
ruthlessly speaking
a language that's foreign.
At the edge of the
canyon without
finality, love
disappears, over and
over again.

The violinist

is bowing my emotions –


my heart: her soundbox.

Our world, conjoined like twins
When you fingered my brain
I found you in my fret
Turned you to a note
In my diamond plaited box
Safely tucked in my heart

Every of your breathe is a sound
A very beautiful song to my ears
If chords make notes
And notes makes sounds
Then you are the missing key
You are sound, I, the box

Our life is tuned like guitar pegs
Together, let's pull the strings
And hear the sweat sound
Escaping from the soundbox
Serenading the atmosphere in bliss
Because you are my Guitar box

Babatunde Raimi
Nigerian Author & Poet
+2348178827380 & +2348035063895